The United States Constitution has many 21st century impacts on our daily lives that are almost never thought about. At a time of growing federal regulation of our lives, there remain areas of life where the 10th Amendment, reserving power to the states is alive and well. The nursing profession is among them. Due to […]
ADDA ELDRIDGE: FOUNDING MOTHER OF ILLINOIS PROFESSIONAL NURSING
The story of Adda Eldredge, Founding Mother of Illinois Professional Nursing does not include battlefields or the hospitals near them, like the stories of Florence Nightingale, Dorothea Dix or Mary Ann Bickerdyke. Her work to professionalize nursing was in the political arena. Her success is astonishing when one considers for a moment that when she […]
Mother Bickerdyke: A Nurse Among Generals
During the early 1860’s Florence Nightingale was getting the world’s first professional nursing school started in London. In the United States, in 1861, Dorothea Dix was appointed Superintendent of the Union Nurses serving in the Civil War. Ms. Dix set strict standards for her nurses to overcome social stigmas surrounding the presence of women in […]
Dorothea Dix: Superintendent of Civil War Nurses
While the Founding Mother of professional nursing, Florence Nightingale, whose birthday is the midpoint of National Nurses Week, was laboring in the Crimean War and establishing her nursing school in London, trouble was brewing the United States. As in Britain, it would be war to move forward nursing as a profession. The recognition of nursing […]
The Founding Mother of the Nursing Profession: Florence Nightingale
The second week of May is National Nurses Week. The week recognizes the contributions to the quality of our lives brought by those engaged in the caring and compassionate profession of nursing. Nursing was recognized as a profession in its own right due to the hard work of many women, aptly described as Founding Mothers. […]